Cotton harvesting machines, or cotton pickers, are agricultural work apparatus provided with a crop acquiring device to remove, or pick, cotton bolls from plant stalks and a conveying device to convey the bolls to a collecting bin, or basket. The baskets are large, to maximize the amount of low-density cotton which can be stored and thereby minimize the number of times the cotton picker must be stopped to empty a full basket into an adjacent truck or trailer.
Bolls are typically pneumatically conveyed from the acquiring device to the basket. A fan is provided on the cotton picker to move air into the region of the crop acquiring device, where the crop acquiring device delivers cotton bolls into the air stream. One or more generally vertically disposed, pipe-like chutes delivers bolls, entrained in the moving air, from the crop acquiring device to the basket through an opening near the top of a wall of the basket. A hood is provided at the opening, projecting outwardly from the basket wall, to surround a portion of the chute in order to keep the chute engaged with the opening and to help guide cotton bolls into the basket.
The basket is raised from its operating position for unloading, so that the cotton can fall by gravity from an unloading door in a side of the basket into an adjacent truck or trailer. The hood is affixed to the basket and therefore rises with the basket when the basket is raised, while the chute is affixed to the frame of the cotton picker and hence does not rise with the basket. A hood is therefore generally not provided a bottom member to complete the surrounding of the end of the chute, so that the hood can rise with the basket without interfering with the chute.
The basket therefore has a lower operating position and a higher unloading position. The basket is high enough, even in its lower operating position, to interfere with some overhead objects such as tree limbs and utility lines which, while not generally found in cotton fields, are more likely to be encountered during shipping and during routine transport of the cotton picker from, e.g., the farmstead to the field. An upper portion of the basket is therefore provided a third, still lower, "transport" position wherein it telescopes within a lower portion of the basket so that the top of the basket is flush with, or slightly lower than, the top of the cab of the cotton picker or otherwise low enough to not interfere with overhead objects.
In order to lower the upper portion of the basket, it is necessary to first eliminate dimensional interferences; e.g., projection of hoods outside the dimensional envelope of the upper portion of the basket. This has heretofore been accomplished by constructing and mounting the hood in the manner of a drawer within a furniture case; i.e., by providing it an operating position wherein it is slid outwardly and a transport position wherein it is slid inwardly. Such a manner of construction, however, tends to produce a heavy hood, difficult to slide, due to the depth required of a drawer-like construction in order to not cock and bind the hood within its slides. The degree of difficulty becomes more apparent when one considers that most cotton pickers are multi-row machines having more than one hood, and that transport routes presenting a height-related problem necessitate changing the positions of the hoods upon every arrival to, and every departure from, a field on that route.
It would be advantageous for a cotton picker to have a hood provided an operating, or open, position wherein it projects outside the dimensional envelope of a basket to engage a chute, and a transport, or closed, position wherein it does not project outside the basket, while not requiring undue effort in the changing of positions.
It would also be advantageous for a cotton picker to have a hood which is compact, whereby the hood and any associated structure will project minimally into a basket and be economical to manufacture and maintain. It would further be advantageous for a cotton picker to have a hood which includes easily operated latching apparatus of positive action for securing the hood in its operating and transport positions.